Editor’s Note: Frances Shure, M.A., L.P.C., has performed an in-depth analysis addressing a key issue of our time: “Why Do Good People Become Silent — or Worse — About 9/11?” The resulting essay, being presented here as a series, is a synthesis of both academic research and clinical observations.

In answering the question in the title of this essay, the November segment — Signal Detection Theory — examined how the “signal” of 9/11 Truth can be drowned out by excessive “noise” that comes from our information-overloaded world, our prior beliefs, and our psychological state of being.

Here, in the December installment, we continue Ms. Shure’s analysis with Part 13: Prior Knowledge of State Crimes Against Democracy and Deep Politics, which explores how our prior knowledge of state crimes by governments, as well as our knowledge of the deep state — as opposed to the visible public state in which we participate as citizens — affects our reception of evidence that indicates we have been lied to about 9/11.

People with prior knowledge of corporate and governmental malfeasance, but especially of State Crimes Against Democracy (SCADs), have an increased capacity to accept evidence that contradicts the official 9/11 conspiracy theory.

Lance deHaven-Smith Lance deHaven-Smith What are SCADs, and how do they differ from other political crimes? Lance deHaven-Smith, a professor of Public Administration and Policy at Florida State University, coined the term “state crimes against democracy” to distinguish them as the illegal or extralegal actions of public officials or elites who manipulate or subvert democratic processes and undermine popular sovereignty. In other words, State Crimes Against Democracy are high crimes that attack not only people, but democracy itself.1

Therefore, according to deHaven-Smith, “election tampering, political assassinations, voter fraud, government graft, non-governmental rogue operations, state counter-democratic actions, and corporate collusion with extralegal initiatives can be classified as SCADs.”2

Before September 11, 2001, each of us had varying degrees of knowledge about political intrigue. If, for example, we had already read professor Peter Dale Scott’s Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, or if we already had a solid understanding of known SCADs, such as Iran-Contra,3 the Gulf of Tonkin,4 and especially Operation Northwoods,5 then we likely had minimal resistance to the evidence pointing to 9/11 as a false-flag operation. On the other hand, those of us who possessed none of this knowledge before 9/11 would have been challenged by a huge paradigm shift when we awoke to the facts that contradicted the official storyline regarding that terrible day.